


Letters Unsent

by AllTheQueensHorses



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Homesickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24865324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllTheQueensHorses/pseuds/AllTheQueensHorses
Summary: A quick one-shot about letters unsent. Set during The King of Attolia.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Letters Unsent

The castle servant entered the bedroom and set a pail and a basket of cleaning supplies down in front of the fireplace. She was the unlucky one who had to clean the soot and ash from the castle fireplaces before they were stoked before nightfall - a dirty job but an essential one. She removed a stiff brush and dustpan and set to work cleaning piles of ash out of the fireplace and into her pail, careful to keep the hearth clean while she worked. No sense in making a mess of the rug in front of the hearth, it would only add to her work.

She frowned as she crouched over the coals. Towards the rear of the fireplace, a partially-burned piece of paper rested against the back wall. It must have fallen out of the flames and gone out, judging by the burns along one corner. She went to place it in her pail, then noticed writing on the reverse side. She paused to read it.

“Doing well.” It read after the burned edge. There was more burnt off, then, “time to myself.”

She frowned. She wondered what the burnt corner had said. They wanted more time to themselves? She could agree with that. It seemed every day, the steward who oversaw the maids found more and more work for her. She kept reading, the letter no longer burnt this far along.

“The cheese here isn’t as good as ours, and the weather is much hotter, though they say fall will bring cooler air. I miss you, Helen, and even our cousins. I would give anything to see one of their stupid faces, even Logos’. Barely anyone here can carry a half-decent conversation.

“Truth be told, I don’t fit in here. It’s all court protocol here and formal customs there and I hate it. You know how much I avoid formal events. My life has turned into one big formality now.” She had to stop and sound that word out.

“There are barons to placate and certain daughters that must be danced with but not others and it's all too much. Some days I don’t know who I am anymore. Did I make a mistake in marrying Irene? I love her, but,” Here the letter stopped, the ink smearing across the page as if it had gotten wet again and had smudged. The maid didn’t know who the Irene the letter was talking about but she felt badly for the letter’s author. She had moved to the castle as a young girl and for several years, felt terribly homesick when she thought of her family. She wished she could give the writer a hug and some wise advice about how they would fit in eventually, but she didn’t know who had written it.

The room was well-decorated but relatively plain, she noticed, looking around. It had several adjoining rooms and could have belonged to any one of the barons or visiting court members. She sighed at the mystery, then realized the sun was almost overhead and hastened to sweep the last few ash piles into her bucket. She was running behind now and the steward wouldn't approve. 

The half-burnt letter dropped into the fireplace, forgotten now as she hurried through the rest of her cleaning and scurried out of the room. It would serve as kindling for the servant who would stoke the fire back to life this evening and would burn along with the message it held, erasing it from time as easily as it was penned. Time would erase the homesickness from the letter's author as it would the letter from the memory of the servant and life would go on as the fall leaves fell and the seasons bled into each other.

\------

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! :) 
> 
> Also, my head cannon is that the country of Eddis has tons of goats and everyone makes artisanal cheeses from them.


End file.
